#98 - Breakfast Pizza

It's New Year's Eve, and we still have three recipes to go! That's what happens when you're away from home from Christmas morning until December 30th. Nothing we can do about that now - that's why we're up early making a new breakfast for #98.

Breakfast Pizza

From Smitten Kitchen This is another Smitten Kitchen recipe, and it's one we've been planning on doing all year. Good thing we had this resolution to actually get us to finally make it. So you roll out your dough, and cover it with Parmigiano cheese, mozzarella, and bacon. Then you crack some eggs on top and put the whole thing in the oven. Once it's out of the oven, you top it off with some parsley, scallions, and shallots. Ooooh, this was delicious. The concept of breakfast pizza was always intriguing, and this did not disappoint. The eggs were runny, the scallions and shallots added a lot of flavor and texture, the Parmigiano and mozzarella went incredibly well with the eggs and bacon, and the pizza crust was the perfect alternative for breakfast toast. We can't say enough about this breakfast. Don't wait a year to make this. You don't know what you're missing.

Ingredients

• 1 lb pizza dough
• 3 strips bacon
• 1/4 cup grated Parmigiano cheese
• 1 cup grated mozzarella
• 3 large eggs
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 Tbs flat-leaf parsley, minced
• 1 scallion, thinly sliced
• 1 shallot, minced

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 500 and adjust the rack to the lowest position.
2. Fry the bacon in a large saute pan over medium-high heat until crisp.
3. Cool on a paper towel-lined plate, then roughly chop.
4. On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough into a disc and then carefully stretch it out to form a 12-inch circle.
5. Flour the surface of of a pizza stone and place the stretched dough on it.
6. Sprinkle the dough with the Parmigiano, mozzarella, and bacon.
7. Crack the eggs over the top and season with salt and pepper.
8. Bake the pizza for 8-10 minutes, rotating after 5 minutes.
9. When the crust is golden, the cheese is melted, and the egg yolks are cooked, remove from the oven.
10. Sprinkle the parsley, scallions, and shallots on top.
11. Let stand for 2 minutes, slice, and serve immediately.

#85 - Pancetta, Cherry Tomato, Burrata, and Scallion Pizza

Apparently Borders went out of business. So when we saw signs outside for like 100% off, we went inside and found some cookbooks for super cheap. One of them was by Jonathan Waxman, the Obi Wan of Top Chef Masters, and we snatched it right up.

Pancetta, Cherry Tomato, Burrata, and Scallion Pizza

From Italian My Way The recipe is a pizza with burrata cheese, an extra creamy mozzarella. If you can't find any at your grocery store, normal mozzarella will work, and it'll only be a little different than intended. Besides the burrata, the other main ingredients are cherry tomatoes and scallions. So chop and mix. Then you roll out the dough (we used some from our favorite New Jersey bakery, but Waxman's got his own recipe for that too), and then add chopped pancetta, the tomato-scallion mix, and the burrata. This was a bizarre pizza. The burrata makes the whole thing soupy - in a good way - and the green scallions, which don't look like the most appetizing pizza toppings, go really well with the pancetta and tomatoes.

So the recipe, despite its eclectic ingredients, is actually really good. Our biggest issue was that we didn't cook it just right, so the bottom of the crust was a little underdone, but that was our fault. If you can find burrata, you might wanna try this. Just make to sure cook it through.

Ingredients

• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• 1 bunch scallions
• 1/2 lb burrata
• 1 lb pizza dough
• 1/2 cup pancetta, diced into small pieces
• 1/4 cup Parmigiano cheese
• 2 Tbs olive oil, plus extra for greasing the pan

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 450.
2. Slice the tomatoes in half on the equator and place in a bowl.
3. Mince the scallions, add to the tomatoes, and toss well.
4. Dice the burrata into small pieces.
5. Lightly brush the bottom of the pizza pan with olive oil.
6. Roll out the dough on a working surface using a small amount of flour and your hands.
7. Transfer the rolled dough to the greased pan.
8. Sprinkle the dough with the pancetta, then the scallions and tomatoes, and finally the burrata.
9. Spread the Parmigiano evenly over the pizza and drizzle the oil on top.
10. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until golden on the top and bottom.
11. Remove from the oven and let sit for about 5 minutes before serving.

#72 - Margherita Pizzelle Fritte

Some of Johnny's relatives in Italy have made these crazy delicious mini fried pizzas, and they're so good that when Paola came over a few summers back, she didn't leave without revealing the recipe. Some of the Limarzis have made it in America before, and they came out pretty well. Now it's our turn to give it a shot.

Margherita Pizzelle Fritte

From Paola Cuomo Just like regular pizza, there are a bunch of different types of pizzelle you can make, and when we started out, we planned on making both the plain margherita pizzas and some that were stuffed with salami. We only ended up making the margherita pizzelle, so you won't need all the ingredients in the next picture to make these like we did. The main thing here is making the dough, which only needs to rest for about 45 minutes. Once the dough's ready to go, you form a bunch of little discs, and plop them in the frying oil. After a little bit of time, you flip them over, add a slice of cheese, and let it melt a bit. Then you pull them out of the oil, top them with a little bit of sauce and basil, and devour them as fast as you can without burning yourself. Because they are de-lic-ious. There's not much more to say than that. If you have some leftover pasta sauce and are ready to have your mind blown, make some of these.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 milk, warmed
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• 1 large pinch salt
• 3/4 Tbs olive oil
• Vegetable oil
• 8 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced
• Tomato sauce
• 15 basil leaves

Preparation

1. On a wooden board, make a mound with the flour.
2. Form a volcano out of the flour and mix the milk and yeast into the hole.
3. Add the salt and olive oil.
4. Begin incorporating the flour into the wet ingredients, slowly pulling down the walls of the volcano.
5. When combined, form the dough into a ball.
6. Knead several times to ensure all wet ingredients are well incorporated.
7. Place dough ball in a bowl and cover with a dish towel, letting rise for at least 45 minutes.
8. Separate the dough into 15 small balls and flatten to form discs.
9. In a large frying pan, heat 1/4 inch vegetable oil over medium heat.
10. When oil is hot, add several of the discs, avoiding overcrowding the pan.
11. When golden brown on the bottom, flip and add a piece of mozzarella.
12. Spoon a small amount of the hot oil to help melt the cheese.
13. When both sides are golden and cheese is slightly melted, remove from oil.
14. Top each pizzella with a heaping teaspoon of sauce and 1-2 basil leaves.

#4 - Ham and Arugula Pizza

Pizza is definitely one of our favorite foods to have when we want something tasty and quick during the busy work week. Who doesn't love dough, cheese, and tomatoes? We have some good pizza places near where we live, but we also sometimes like to make our own pizza instead. This recipe is actually a white pizza, so there's no red tomato sauce involved. It's a super easy recipe and is perfect for a midweek dinner. We added ham and arugula onto the original recipe to make it even better.

Ham and Arugula Pizza

Adapted from 5 Ingredient Fix This recipe comes from Food Network chef, Claire Robinson, who has a show called "5 Ingredient Fix" where she uses, you guessed it, only five ingredients to make each recipe. We added 2 more ingredients onto the original recipe, so it's technically a 7 ingredient fix.The dough is probably the most important part of a pizza. Some like a New York thickness, others go for Chicago-style, and yet others prefer thin crust. We haven't tried making our own dough yet (hopefully one day), but there is a great bakery near Emily's family in New Jersey that sells freshly-made dough. Every time we go up for a visit, we make a stop and buy some dough. When rolled out, this dough makes for a medium thickness. One pound ends up making one pizza - we usually make two so we have leftovers for the week.
The real recipe calls for garlic-flavored olive oil. We didn't really know what that meant the first time we tried the recipe, so we just improvised. And for us, that means throwing some garlic and olive oil in a bowl and covering the top. It ended up working out great, and the garlic definitely started infusing with the oil after about 20 minutes.
Since the white pizza with just mozzarella and ricotta can be kind of plain, we decided to add some ham and arugula on top. We used black forest ham and added it on before putting the pizza in the oven. For the arugula, we didn't add it until the last ten minutes of cook time so it had some time to wilt but still had a little bite to it in the end.
The end result was a perfect pizza. The garlic oil gave great flavor to the dough, and the addition of the ham and arugula really made the pizza a perfect mid-week dinner. Maybe next time we try pizza we'll make an attempt at our own dough.
Here's the recipe for you:

Ingredients

• 3 cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
  
• 1 lb ball of pizza dough, at room temperature
  
• 3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
• 2 tsps oregano, plus more for garnish
• 1/4 lb ham or prosciutto cotto
• 2 handfuls arugula
  

Preparation

1. Crush the garlic and let sit in covered bowl of olive oil for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat over to 375ºF.
3. Lightly brush the bottom of the pizza pan with regular olive oil.
4. Roll out the dough on a work surface using a small amount of flour and your hands. Transfer the rolled dough to the greased pan.
5. Brush the top of the dough with the garlic-flavored olive oil and sprinkle some oregano over the oil.
   
6. Spread the mozzarella over the crust.
7. Use a spoon to dollop the ricotta evenly over the mozzarella, and then sprinkle more oregano on top.
8. Add small pieces of ham over the cheeses.
9. Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes.
10. Add the arugula on top of the pizza and then finish cooking for 5 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.
    
11. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.